Mr Alvarez told BioSpectrum that, "R&D productivity is getting worse and is reduced by half every nine years. Innovation has become an expensive and complicated business." Mr Alvarez highlighted that regulatory bodies across the world are appending to the pain by making it difficult for life science companies to bring their drugs to the market. He said that the regulatory bodies, including the US FDA, are purposely placing hurdles in the path of drug discovery and commercialization processes in order to control the cost of drugs by controlling their access in the market.

Mr Alvarez pointed out that while companies have several market opportunities in the form of ageing population, globalization and advances in technology, the attitude of "control cost by controlling access" shown by regulatory bodies will eventually lead to stifled innovation.

Furthermore, Mr Sakai highlighted that the Japanese pharma market would face some major hindrances in the future, starting from late 2013. Japan is going to levy an additional three percent consumption tax on all its medicines. The first phase of this increase would be effective April 2014 and the second from October 2015. Also, other factors like increase in the premium on new drug pricing and slash in the long-listed product pricing will only lead to a further decline in operating profits for the Japanese pharma market.

(The author was in Tokyo on the invitation of Reed Exhibitions, Japan, the organizers of the 7th in-Pharma Japan and 26th Interphex Japan)